Lord Foul's Bane

“No,” Mhoram sighed with a tired smile of recognition. “I cannot. How could I leave so many to die?”

Covenant only half listened. He felt like a derelict, and he was picking among the wreckage of his emotions, in search of something worth salvaging. But part of him understood. He put the two fingers of his right hand between his lips and gave one short, piercing whistle.

All the company stared at him. Quaan seemed to think that the Unbeliever had lost his mind; Mhoram's eyes jumped at wild guesses. But Manethrall Lithe tossed her cord high in the air and crowed, “The Ranyhyn! Mane of the World! He calls them!”

“How?” protested Quaan. “He refused them.”

“They reared to him!” she returned with a nickering laugh. “They will come.”

Covenant had stopped listening altogether. Something was happening to him, and he lurched to his feet to meet it upright. The dimensions of his situation were changing. To his blurred gaze, the comrades of the company grew slowly harder and solider-took on the texture of native rock. And the mountain itself became increasingly adamantine. It seemed as immutable as the cornerstone of the world. He felt veils drop from his perception; he saw the unclouded fact of Gravin Threndor in all its unanswerable power. He paled beside it; his flesh grew thin, transient. Air as thick as smoke blew through him, chilling his bones. The throat of his soul contracted in silent pain. “What's happening to me?”

Around the cliff edge to the south, Ranyhyn came galloping. Like a blaze of hope, they raced the down rush of the Lions. At once, a hoarse cheer broke from the warriors. “We are saved!” Mhoram cried. “There is time enough!” With the rest of the company, he hurried forward to meet the swift approach of the Ranyhyn.

Covenant felt that he had been left alone. “What's happening to me?” he repeated dimly toward the hard mountain.

But Prothall was still at his side. Covenant heard the High Lord say in a kind old voice that seemed as loud as thunder, 'Drool is dead. He was your summoner, and with his death the call ends. That is the way of such power.

“Farewell, Unbeliever! Be true! You have wrought greatly for us. The Ranyhyn will preserve us. And with the Staff of Law and the Second Ward, we will not be unable to defend against the Despiser's ill. Take heart. Despair and bitterness are not the only songs in the world.”

But Covenant wailed in mute grief. Everything around him-Prothall and the company and the Ranyhyn and the Fire-Lions and the mountain-became too solid for him. They overwhelmed his perceptions, passed beyond his senses into grey mist. He clutched about him and felt nothing. He could not see; the Land left the range of his eyes. It was too much for him, and he lost it.

Twenty Five: Survived

GREY mist swirled around him for a long convulsive moment. Then it began to smear, and he lost it as well. His vision blurred, as if some hard god had rubbed a thumb across it. He blinked rapidly, tried to reach up to squeeze his eyes; but something soft prevented his hand. His sight remained blank.

He was waking up, though he felt more as if he were dropping into grogginess.

Gradually, he became able to identify where he was. He lay in a bed with tubular protective bars on the sides. White sheets covered him to his chin. Grey curtains shut him off from the other patients in the room. A fluorescent light stared past him emptily from the ceiling. The air was faintly tinged with ether and germicide. A call button hung at the head of the bed.

All his fingers and toes were numb.

Nerves don't regenerate, of course they don't, they don't—

This was important-he knew it was important-but for some reason it did not carry any weight with him. His heart was too hot with other emotions to feel that particular ice.

What mattered to him was that Prothall and Mhoram and the Quest had survived. He clung to that as if it were proof of sanity-a demonstration that what had happened to him, that what he had done, was not the product of madness, self-destruction. They had survived; at least his bargain with the Ranyhyn had accomplished that much. They had done exactly what Lord Foul wanted them to do-but they had survived.

At least he was not guilty of their deaths, too. His inability to use his ring, to believe in his ring, had not made Wraiths of them. That was his only consolation for what he had lost.

Then he made out two figures standing at the foot of the bed. One of them was a woman in white-a nurse. As he tried to focus on her, she said, “Doctor-he's regaining consciousness.”

The doctor was a middle-aged man in a brown suit. The flesh under his eyes sagged as if he were weary of all human pain, but his lips under his greying moustache were gentle. He approached along the side of the bed, touched Covenant's forehead for a moment, then pulled up Covenant's eyelids and shined a small light at his pupils.

With an effort, Covenant focused on the light.

The doctor nodded, and put his flashlight away. “Mr. Covenant?”

Covenant swallowed at the dryness in his throat.

“Mr. Covenant.” The doctor held his face close to Covenant's, and spoke quietly, calmly. “You're in the hospital. You were brought here after your run-in with that police car. You've been unconscious for about four hours.”

Covenant lifted his head and nodded to show that he understood.

“Good,” said the doctor. 'I'm glad you're coming around. Now, let me talk to you for a moment.

“Mr. Covenant, the police officer who was driving that car says that he didn't hit you. He claims that he stopped in time-you just fell down in front of him. From my examination, I would be inclined to agree with him. Your hands are scraped up a bit, and you have a bruise on your forehead-but things like that could have happened when you fell.” He hesitated momentarily, then asked, “Did he hit you?”

Dumbly, Covenant shook his head. The question did not feel important.

“Well, I suppose you could have knocked yourself out by hitting your head on the pavement. But why did you fall?”

That, too, did not feel important. He pushed the question away with a twitch of his hands. Then he tried to sit up in bed.

He succeeded before the doctor could help or hinder him; he was not as weak as he had feared he might be. The numbness of his fingers and toes still seemed to lack conviction, as if they would recover as soon as their circulation was restored.

Nerves don't—

After a moment, he regained his voice, and asked for his clothes.

The doctor studied him closely. “Mr. Covenant,” he said, “I'll let you go home if you want to. I suppose I should keep you under observation for a day or two. But I really haven't been able to find anything wrong with you. And you know more about taking care of leprosy than I do.” Covenant did not miss the look of nausea that flinched across the nurse's face. “And, to be perfectly honest”- the doctor's tone turned suddenly acid- “I don't want to have to fight the staff here to be sure that you get decent care. Do you feel up to it?”

In answer, Covenant began fumbling with awkward fingers at the dull white hospital gown he wore.

Abruptly, the doctor went to a locker, and came back with Covenant's clothes.

Covenant gave them a kind of VSE. They were scuffed and dusty from his fall in the street; yet they looked exactly as they had looked when he had last worn them, during the first days of the Quest.

Exactly as if none of it had ever happened.

When he was dressed, he signed the releases. His hand was so cold that he could hardly write his name.

But the Quest had survived. At least his bargain had been good for that.

Then the doctor gave him a ride in a wheelchair down to the discharge exit. Outside the building, the doctor